Max Valiquette is ready to talk about himself again, what he’s up to now, and about his time in the Prime Minister’s Office.

“I went silent for 18 months,” the former executive director of communications for Justin Trudeau’s PMO wrote on LinkedIn on Aug. 11. “Not because I had nothing to say; rather, it was because my job [at the PMO] wasn’t about me. Now I’m back!”

His comeback includes launching a Substack where he plans to serialize a “10,000-or-so-word memoir” of his time at PMO “during what I will delicately call a batshit-crazy time in Canadian politics,” he wrote in his first post on Aug. 11.

“There’s insight. There’s context. There’s tea,” he wrote. Catnip to Heard on the Hill, who subscribed immediately.

When he joined the PMO in November 2023, Valiquette brought with him two decades of experience in speaking publicly “on culture, politics, and business,” but chose to mute his personal views in favour of promoting the prime minister and what the federal government were up to, which he did until this past March.

“I believed then, and still believe now, that public service comes with a responsibility to make it about the work, not about yourself. (That I was capable of that may come as a surprise to some of you.)”

Now with the “kind of clarity that is only provided by distance”—five months—Valiquette is unpacking his “intense” time working in the Trudeau PMO, an experience which he describes as “extraordinary privilege” and “so much more complicated than it looks from the outside.”

He’s also writing other non-fiction, “the first in a series of academically-rigorous-but-highly-entertaining books, each tackling a single huge idea that shapes how we think and act and live,” which he hopes to publish next year.

Volume Two of Capitalism and Colonialism out Sept. 2

Former Trent University professor Bryan D. Palmer is publishing the second volume of his Capitalism and Colonialism series of history books just after the Labour Day Weekend.

To be published by Lorimer on Sept. 2, The Making of Modern Canada 1890–1960: A New History for the Twenty-First Century Volume Two follows Palmer’s first volume, Canada’s Origins 1500–1890, which came out in 2024. 

Palmer is Professor Emeritus and former Canada Research Chair, Canadian Studies, Trent University, Peterborough, Ont. 

Clocking in at 432 pages, The Making of Modern Canada 1890–1960 “continues the examination of our nation’s past through a new lens, incorporating the scholarship of Canadian historians to portray a richly endowed and wealthy but very unequal first-world country,” reads the blurb from the publisher’s website. 

“Weaving together themes that include business, labour, politics, and social history, this account brings the experiences of Indigenous peoples into the centre of the narrative.”

New book Circling the Drain examines Trump’s words and deeds

American author and reporter William Boardman has a new book coming out soon: Circling the Drain: Trump’s Assault on America by Toronto-based Yorkland Publishing. The 332-pager “dissects the words and actions of the [United States] president and his MAGA cohorts,” laying “bare [Donald] Trump’s deluge of lies, criminality, cruelty, and his ultimate aim: to replace America’s 250-year-old democracy with autocratic rule.” The book also provides the reader with “12 Rules for Surviving Trump 2.0.”

Circling the Drain is a follow up to Boardman’s 2019 book, Exceptional: American Exceptionalism Takes Its Toll, a collection of articles “warning of American decline for Reader Supported News.” According to the press release, Boardman is a veteran reporter who “grew up in Manhattan, graduated from Yale, wrote for television, and moved to Vermont in 1971. He worked as a reporter and editor, then served as an elected non-lawyer judge.”

‘Self-interested politics have taken over the world’: Bob Rae

One former ambassador and one current one expressed their views on the state of Canada-U.S. relations on social media on Aug. 5.

Peter MacArthur, this country’s former envoy to the Philippines and Indonesia and who’s now executive director of the Australia-Canada Economic Leadership Forum, posted a photo of then-American president John F. Kennedy during a visit to Ottawa over 60 years ago: “Contrast words of President Kennedy to Canada’s Parliament in 1961 with today: ‘Geography has made us neighbours. History has made us friends. Economics has made us partners. And necessity has made us allies. Those whom nature hath so joined together, let no man put asunder.’ Hmm.”

To which our current ambassador to the United Nations Bob Rae commented “Those days are over. The power of transactional, self interested politics and economics has taken over.  Not just us, but the world. Empathy has gone on vacation. We’re going to need to fight to get it back.

Isaac Bogoch’s name, image used without permission

Elsewhere on the internet, University of Toronto infectious diseases physician and scientist Isaac Bogoch’s had his summer soured by a case of wrongful appropriation. 

“A quick note: My name and image are being used without permission in social media ads promoting products I do not endorse. I am working with social media platforms and the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre to have these ads removed,” wrote Bogach, who gained national attention for his work during the COVID-19 global pandemic, on social media on Aug. 8.

cleadlay@hilltimes.com

The Hill Times